Going To The Sun
by SignsOfSun
Summary: Warning: Character Death


Title: Going To the Sun

Author: Signs Of Sun

**Warning: Character death. Definite sad warning here.**

Note: I have no idea where this came from. It pretty much showed and wrote itself. "shrugs"

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_Going To the Sun_

It's funny how over time you build up what you expect to happen in your mind. Kind of like painting a portrait, one painstaking layer of color at a time. But then somehow when you reach your destination it's not the picture you expected. The images tell a different story than the one you set out telling and the hues have blended into surprising shades.

And that is the truth of how my brother died.

In his own words hunting was "a dangerous gig.". I never could deny that because it was true. It was extremely dangerous and I suppose that was why our father had invested so much time in training us, both mentally and physically. The more skilled you were, slightly better your odds of coming out of the next battle still pushing air in and out of your body.

But all three of us knew that skill could only save you so many times and aid you so far. There was only ever the moment you were in because the next or the one after that might not have a favorable outcome. Go in prepared, able, and strong. Give to the fight all you had. And hopefully come out the other side.

Dad thought he was preparing us, protecting us, from what lived in the shadows that had invaded his world so forcefully. And on some level I understood that. I am certain Dean did too. But I have to confess that the thought had passed through my mind that what he was doing in reality was speeding up the time table on our demise.

Our father set us on a road, both literally and figuratively. And the intangible road he chose was the darkest most daunting of passages. But to him at the time every road was equally as ominous. I even heard this once in his own words, saying that after our mother was killed all he saw was darkness, evil, everywhere.

And at the thought of those words now my heart shatters with sadness for him.

He didn't see any other route to travel down and so made it his mission to prepare Dean and me for the tough journey ahead. As children we lived seeing with our father's eyes. Unknowingly he had us seeing his reality, that every road was lined with darkness and every mile could bring new danger. As I got older my sights shifted and I gradually over time caught glimpses of other roads, brighter ones, and by the time I was in my late teens there was a need in me to explore the other roads. The roads that our father was blind to and the paths that Dean wouldn't allow himself to look at, acknowledge, I couldn't ignore.

So the day I held my brother's dead body in arms, seated in the gravel at the edge of a two lane blacktop in Montana I was taken off guard. It had not been anything of the supernatural kind that had caused his heart to stop beating. It had been of something so very human.

Dean's passing came in his thirty fourth year. Too short the number of years he spent here. Too old a soul to not have made an incredible impact in just those few.

Ironically Dean would have probably shaken his head at my belief in past lives and reincarnation. It's ironic because he was one of the main reasons I was a believer.

There was always this knowledge I carried, just a fact I possessed. It had always been there, sitting vigil in the far reaches of my mind. And, too, there was the aura that emanated from Dean without him even knowing. Maybe because of my abilities I was more tuned into it. No matter how I knew, one fact remained.

Dean's soul had been here before. Despite the childish antics and lack of social etiquette my brother was aged beyond his years. He was an old soul, a traveler of lives.

That knowledge was the single thing that kept me from losing my mind that sunny afternoon on that empty road in Glacier National Park.

They say that souls can travel in circles, in groups. That connected souls can keep finding one another in different lives. They gravitate to each other. Somehow I don't know if my soul is quite as well traveled as Dean's, but I sense from time to time that I've been here before at least once.

I was more connected with my older brother than anyone else I've known in my entire life. And that day sitting in the Impala in Salvation, Iowa I meant it when I said that Dean had always been there.

I don't think this is the first time that Dean and I have met.

And somehow I know we'll meet again. Most would probably say that it's simply a creation of my loss. That by holding out hope that I will be reunited with him I don't have to let him go completely.

I know that they are wrong.

As I stand here, kicking gently at the gravel under my boot, I can't help let the smile seep onto to my face. It takes some of the sting of my tears away. It's been three years and on every anniversary I come here.

Dean passed in such a beautiful place, one so vibrant and full of light. I guess a piece of me had decided somewhere along our ebony journey that it would come with darkness and decay not light and beauty.

I feel the last words he spoke to me floating in the air, dancing in the late afternoon rays of sunlight.

"_I'll never be far."_

He never said goodbye and neither did I. Our worn and weary father had driven over that same beautiful stretch of road on his journey to meet up with me. And once again the road doused in light that I see now was the one shrouded in darkness for our father. It was blackened by the passing of his oldest child.

At first I was not sure whether or not Dad ever said his own goodbye to Dean. I never heard the words leave his lips. I had no way to know if he said them silently inside his mind. I wasn't with him every second after he arrived, drawn to a cabin in the woods by my devastating phone call.

I simply know that I never did.

Even as we buried my brother amongst the alpine flora of a meadow that sat just outside the property of the national park there was no words of ending, no goodbye.

There had never been any spoken discussion of whether or not it would be us. Dad and I read it in each other minds. There would be no procedures, no paperwork, no questions, no invasive prying surrounding the passing of this man. It would be quiet and simple. Peaceful.

As Dad and I stood in that meadow, freshly overturned earth under our feet, I confessed to my father about the disappearance of Dean from our lives.

"_We'll meet again." _

The soft spoken words from my father that had answered back had taken me off guard.

"_Just a matter of time."_

And I knew then and there that our father had not said goodbye to his eldest son. He had simply told him the words we'd both heard so many hundreds of times before, the words that promised to see each other soon.

The golden August afternoon sun is glittering off the blue water of the lake spread out before my eyes. At over six hundred feet in depth and guarded on either side by mountains it seems forever deep. Although the water is crystal clear after a few feet it is impossible to see any further down. It simply turns to blackness, seemingly bottomless.

Dean had saved a soul from being taken by a darkness just as deep.

We had been driving since the early morning and our conversation had turned to finding food. Retelling the tale of our last hunting gig had us declaring we deserved the food of kings. It hadn't been the scariest of spirits, but had been a trial of any hunter's patience. The more elusive the thing had become the more determined and in our element we were. Just the memory of my brother's pissed off face is enough to send a chuckle out into the wind around me. Even mad as all hell with frustration there was always this super charged energy coming off of Dean when a challenge presented itself. It was like electricity crackling in the air and you couldn't help but be sparked into being amped up yourself.

So nine days and much wreckage later we were victorious. Only a handful of hours later we were flying over the miles again, windows down and music spilling loudly from the speakers.

Dean had spotted the scrawny dark haired teenaged boy first. The kid's feet were balanced rather precariously on the top of a pointed boulder that stood at the edge of the water. Once I had turned my head from the passenger side window in response to Dean pulling the car over I saw him too, swaying ever so slightly back and forth on his perch. I had glanced over to Dean and saw his expression. It had fallen from the confident destroyer of evil to perceptive protector mode. As I followed Dean's lead, exiting the car, I studied the boy more closely. He couldn't have been more than twelve or thirteen, but there was something about him that cried out for rescue. Dean had the eyes of an eagle when it came to spotting a kid who wasn't feeling confident in their own worth. Dean had stretched, raising his arms above his head and yawning exaggeratedly. A clearly audible comment departed his mouth about how driving straight through sure did make you need to stop and stretch your legs. At first the boy had not acknowledged our presence and after I had finished agreeing about the need to stretch Dean kept right on going, taking the resources at hand to strike up a conversation. My brother chose the very expensive bike that rested up against one of the large rooks along the shore.

The words "nice bike" were enough to connect with the boy and there was a sheepish answer given about his dad giving it to him.

And Dean kept forward momentum, latching on to the topic that had opened the door, and very gradually closing the physical distance between himself and the spot where the boy stood.

I had done my best to melt into the background. There had been something about the situation, about the vibes coming off the kid, that screamed if he was left alone it wouldn't end well.

I remember watching and listening while pretending I wasn't. I caught bits of pieces of their low voices, of the heartbreaking story that spilled from the boy and of my brother's truthful words about hope.

My brother was also very straight to the point and within mere minutes Dean had him convinced there was at least the shreds of something worth sticking around this life for.

I heard the boy agree.

I had leaned up against the drivers side of the car and was flipping through a brochure on Glacier, pretending to not be listening, at that instant.

"Why don't I hold on to that while you climb down from there huh?" Dean's voice had stated gently. At that I was drawn to look. The boy had turned on the rock, now looking down at Dean instead of out over the water. And for the first time I caught sight of the gun clutched in the kid's right hand, pressed up against the his thigh and half hidden by his long shirt sleeves.

I had straightened up from leaning against the car and had tossed the brochure inside through the open window. On guard, but unmoving I watched on. The boy, teary eyed, nodded agreeably at Dean, he would climb down. The tension in my body had faded to pride at my socially challenged brother's ability to connect to those who needed protecting, especially if it was from themselves. I had seen the boy's arm move to hold out the gun to Dean and in the same image in my memory comes the sight of the kid's unsteady legs as he went to take the first step to come down from the boulder. The boy's body had listed to the right, towards the water, and Dean instinctively reached out to grab a handful of his shirt. The teenager had swayed for a fraction of a second before falling forward towards Dean and the ground.

In the heartbeat between both of them being on their feet and both of them landing in the gravel the gunshot came. I vividly recall the boy's right arm flaying out in a desperate attempt to regain his balance. His panic had left the gun forgotten in his grasp.

And somewhere in that tiny span of time his hand had clenched and his index finger had pulled the trigger.

I had been in motion before the echo dissipated in the air.

The two of them had crashed to the ground in a tangled pile.

But only the boy ever climbed to his feet.

The accidentally fired bullet had cut through my brother's chest at close range.

I can still remember the sound of my own voice as I called out his name, thick with fear and knowledge. I don't know where it had come from in me to instruct the boy to get on his bike and get out of there. Maybe it seemed the only good I could to do, to spare him the consequences, to not undo the good Dean had done.

The words that passed between me and my brother reflect back to me as brilliantly as the sun sparkles over the blue water before me.

"_Dean, hold on I'm going to get you some help," I said, determination strong in my tone. I started to kneel in the gravel at the top of Dean's head and place my hands under his arms to get a hold of him to get him to the car, but something deeply embedded in Dean's voice when he responded stopped me in my task and I ended up sitting on the ground with Dean's head and upper back leaned up against my chest._

"_Nope. Not this time Sammy."_

_There was such confidence in it, such knowing._

"_But Dean…"_

"_It's too long. I'd rather it be here," my brother spoke so quietly it was barely more than a breath. It felt like I had heard the words inside my mind instead of through the air into my ears._

"_Don't go."_

"_I'll never be far."_

And with that I had felt his soul escape the confines of his body. I sat in the gravel where I stand now for a long time, holding on so tightly to him that when I finally released my hold I had deep impressions in the palms of my hands from where the button's of his shirt had pressed into my skin.

I had wanted to stay like that even longer, but for fear of a passerby on the road I had picked up Dean and laid him in the backseat, covering him with a blanket we kept in the trunk. Then driven to the cabin nearby that I had seen listed in Dad's journal somewhere in a past reading. After a few still minutes seated on the steps of that cabin, more alone than I had ever felt before, I punched our father's number into my cell.

And that would seem like the end to most, but it's not.

The story doesn't end there, not for Dean and me. And maybe not for our Dad too.

As I look over this beautiful place, the lake's clear water, the mountains towering above in the late afternoon sun, and the miles of road laid out down the hill behind me I look forward to seeing my brother again.

"Someday," I whisper and turn to head back to my car parked a few feet away. I pile in the drivers seat, roll down both front windows and turn on Dean's music.

Now I look ahead, speeding back onto the road that winds around the lake and up into the mountains. This road leads to the next one, a road called Going To The Sun Highway.

This is a place that I never expected the portrait of my life to include. It's a place so full of life and light that the gorgeous hues all around me are ones I never thought existed.

The tale of my brother's passing was saturated with a brighter, more golden hue, than the one I had expected over those long years.

But the tale is only a piece of a larger story.

One in which souls travel in circles, in groups, and find each other over and over.

So I know someday I will see Dean again.

The sound of his last words ring so true to me in my heart now.

"_I'll never be far."_

The End


End file.
